


let the river rush in

by brella



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, Hair Dyeing, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-30 04:26:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17216957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brella/pseuds/brella
Summary: Kenma’s nestled against the side of the bathtub, wheat-gold hair clipped back in twin barrettes decorated with plastic cherries, clicking fastidiously away on his PS Vita. “I just said I needed your help.”“And here I am, giving it,” Tetsurou says with a long-suffering sigh, approaching the sink. “At nine o’clock. On a school night. Because I am—”“Kind, I know,” Kenma interrupts.Kuroo retouches Kenma’s roots and figures some things out.





	let the river rush in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astrid_fischer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrid_fischer/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Entanglement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5994672) by [strikinglight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/strikinglight/pseuds/strikinglight). 



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LILY!!! AND CONGRATULATIONS ON FINISHING THE FANTASY AU!!!! This is a birthday present first and foremost but it can also serve as your Prize. 
> 
> Sorry that I can't offer you excellent Kuroken and must instead offer my Kuroken, but I hope that dropping Florence in the title is a sufficient distraction. 
> 
> I hope you had a nice day at the aquarium. 
> 
> This is essentially a remix of a concept explored by the indomitable Meg in [Entanglement](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5994672), so as per usual I find myself Owing A Great Deal To Meg's Genius. :')

_And I've always been in love with you  
_ _Could you tell it from the moment that I met you?_

— Florence + the Machine, "The End of Love"

 

* * *

 

 

Just after dusk, Tetsurou’s phone buzzes at the edge of his desk. _I need your help with something_ , a new message from Kenma reads, and nothing further.

“You didn’t have to make it sound so mysterious,” he says half an hour later, barefoot in Kenma’s bathroom with a bottle of developer in one hand and a Ramune in the other. (The Ramune is for Kenma.)

Even though the sun has set, heat still seeps in from the roof and Kenma’s cheeks still glisten under the fluorescent light. The sliver of scalp visible in the part of his black roots is a little too pink for Tetsurou’s liking—he’ll have to lecture him on wearing the proper amount of sunscreen later.

“I didn’t,” Kenma mutters back, curling his toes over the alternating blue and white tiles. He’s nestled against the side of the bathtub, wheat-gold hair clipped back in twin barrettes decorated with plastic cherries, clicking fastidiously away on his PS Vita. “I just said I needed your help.”

“And here I am, giving it,” Tetsurou says with a long-suffering sigh, approaching the sink. “At nine o’clock. On a school night. Because I am—”

“Kind, I know,” Kenma interrupts. He clicks his tongue at something on the console. Then, posture loosening, as Tetsurou turns on the faucet, he repeats, unheard, “I know.”

It’s Tetsurou’s first time working with bleach, and the first time he has had a sufficiently reasonable excuse to fulfill his obnoxious and frequent desire to comb his fingers through Kenma’s hair, root to tip. Kenma dips his head back obligingly at Tetsurou’s touch, switching off his game and closing his eyes with a bare but contented sigh that wrings at Tetsurou’s heart. The tile is cool and smooth on his knee when he drops it to balance better, his thumb grazing the ridge of Kenma’s ear and lingering for a moment just beside his jaw.

Tetsurou collects himself and paints the roots carefully. The brush that came with the bleaching supplies is pretty cheap and the work is slow, but he makes do and is sure to keep checking the instructions.

Kenma doesn’t seem to care about the tedium. After a while, Tetsurou wonders if he’s fallen asleep.

“Kuro,” Kenma murmurs. Tetsurou jumps.

“Don’t startle me like that,” he scolds him. “You can’t just be dead silent for five hours and then suddenly say something.”

Kenma glances at the plastic green clock mounted next to the sink. “It’s been ten minutes.”

Tetsurou churlishly swirls the brush in the bowl. He’s getting down to the last of it, and the timer he’d set on the edge of the bathtub only has two minutes left. Kenma had given him clear instructions on how not to fry the roots—it will take a few cycles—but he’s still concerned.

He dabs some of it with one finger to spread it more evenly, and foolishly wishes for a second that he wasn’t wearing gloves, even if that would mean exposing his hands to bleach. The bathroom smells of chemicals and air freshener and Kenma, the harsh with the familiar.

“What were you going to say?” Tetsurou asks, lowering his hand and setting the bowl on the floor.

Kenma opens his eyes, burnt gold settling on the ceiling. His arms hang loosely at his sides, hands gathered between his crossed legs, Vita set neatly on the floor by his knee. Tetsurou has become quite good at deciphering Kenma’s assortment of pensive expressions, but this one he strangely cannot read.

“Um…” Kenma answers. His gaze shifts, as though caught on something, a moth or a shadow, but there’s nothing there.

The timer goes off, a brisk little ring that bounces off the porcelain like rain, and whatever Kenma may have said scatters at its interruption.

Kenma reaches behind himself for the cold water spigot in the bathtub, the stretched muscle in his sweat-damp neck casting a shadow in the dip of it when he moves. Tetsurou’s eyes follow the river.

“Thanks for doing this,” Kenma tells him, bowing his head to the cold water.

“Anytime,” Tetsurou says, even as his heart says, _Anything_.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Four to eight weeks. Tetsurou becomes so attuned to that passage of time that Kenma doesn’t even have to text him about it after a while. Every four to eight weeks, he finds himself in Kenma’s bathroom with a pair of rubber gloves.

“What’s up, third-year Pudding Head?” Tetsurou greets him with a grin on a drizzly afternoon, one month into his first year of university.

Kenma squints at him from the doorway for a moment, looking deeply weary, before shuffling aside to grant him passage. Some of his hair slips down to shutter his face. Tetsurou nudges the door open more widely with the toe of his sneaker and lopes inside as he has countless times.

“They’re growing in again,” Tetsurou says of the bloom of dark strands at the crown of Kenma’s stooped head. Easily, he sets a hand over them and gives them a ruffle. “Too cool, Kenma.”

Kenma bats his hand away. “Stop,” he mumbles, without heat.

Tetsurou follows him into the bathroom and lays out the supplies precariously on the sink. Kenma settles into his spot on the floor, slouching back bent against the side of the bathtub. He has his 3DS this time, the fancy purple one with the galaxy cover.

“Are you winning?” Tetsurou asks cheekily as he washes his hands.

Kenma sighs and doesn’t answer. He stopped doing so about four years ago.

Tetsurou is only falling back on the old, innocuous question because he doesn’t know the most laid-back way to mention that even being in the same room as Kenma again after six weeks away has made him feel like he needs to sprint laps around their neighborhood until dark. He wonders if it’s obvious. It would be foolish to assume he could hide anything from Kenma anyway, but it’s more foolish still to want to scoop him up in a hug and spin him around, like in a movie.

Kenma’s pretty light. He could do it.

“What are you staring at me for?” Kenma mutters, thumbs working at the circle pad.

“Just thinking about you buying sodas for the first-years like a good senpai.”

“Fukunaga does that,” Kenma says. Then he scowls. “And Lev.”

“That upstart bastard. He’s not even a full senpai yet.”

Kenma snorts. “Full senpai?”

Tetsurou dries his hands on the same faded green towel Kenma’s mom has had hanging next to the sink for years, the one with tiny roses embroidered in the edges.

“Second-years don’t count,” he elaborates. “Tell him I said that. No, tell him _Yaku_ said that.”

Kenma’s lips twitch. “Did Yaku say that?”

“He did now.”

“Hm.”

Tetsurou mixes the bleach in the blue bowl and tries not to wrinkle his nose at the smell. The drizzle outside has shifted to a steady rain, pattering against the roof as if trying to make a point.

“How’s school?” Kenma asks. Tetsurou smiles fondly to himself.

“Same as ever,” he replies. “Lectures and exams and practice and exams again. Sometimes if I’m feeling really excited I’ll buy groceries.” _Yesterday on the train I turned to say something to you before remembering that you weren’t there._

“You don’t have to pretend you think it’s boring,” Kenma says with a huff of amusement, and Tetsurou winces, bluff called. “Just because any normal person would.”

“When did you get so mean?” Tetsurou lays a hand over his chest, turning to give Kenma a wounded look. “Did Lev do this to you?”

A wan but comfortable smile is touching Kenma’s lips, and the sight of it makes the end of Tetsurou’s question trail a little. He’s gotten rusty.

Kenma says, “I missed you, Kuro.”

Tetsurou’s heart surges dangerously, just for a second, and then he manages to wrestle it back down again. He bows his head over the sink again, continuing to mix the bleach even though it’s already well combined.

“Have _you_ started thinking about school yet?” he asks conversationally, slinging a towel from the open linen cabinet over his shoulder.

His only answer is a noncommittal hum. He crosses the distance between them with the bowl in hand, lingering for an instant to watch Kenma chew his lip and draw his 3DS closer to his face.

He settles onto the edge of the bathtub, staring at Kenma’s ducked head, at the triangle of skin visible where his hair curtains over his shoulders. Tetsurou counts the shapes of vertebrae, the dark mole resting between two of the curves. He could fit his lips there, if he were just to bend closer.

He works in the bleach again, rinses it out when the hair turns pumpkin-orange, reapplies it. Kenma is quiet, and could not be more blatantly avoiding Tetsurou’s question. The view outside the window is growing darker, daylight shrunken by the stormclouds.

“Kenma,” he says a little chidingly, unable to take it any longer.

Kenma gives, shrugging one shoulder. “I figured I’d follow you.”

Tetsurou halts, palm hovering over the crown of Kenma’s head. An old, worn guilt settles at his back.

“Okay,” he says evenly. “But I didn’t ask what you figured. I asked what you wanted.”

Kenma cranes his neck, the pale skin of it exposed, and frowns up at him, as if hurt by his tone. Tetsurou doesn’t know why; his tone had been perfectly diplomatic.

“I want you to go where you want to go,” Tetsurou says, voice softening, and sighs. “You’ve spent enough of your time looking after me.”

Kenma’s face faintly twitches. “That’s not why I’d…”

His gaze darts to the window, outside of which the maple in Tetsurou’s yard is visible over the fence, its scarlet leaves vivid even as the day dims. Tetsurou watches him in silence.

And Kenma whispers, looking away from him, “That’s not why.”

Tetsurou is powerless to interpret that. With only a fraction of hesitation, he slips his hand against the back of Kenma’s neck to steady him when he eases back his head. Gone is the unsightly splotch of orange; Tetsurou can only see gold now, as it ought to be.

Kenma closes his eyes before Tetsurou has turned the spigot. His dark lashes shift when he breathes out. The weight of him settles comfortably in Tetsurou’s palm.

Without having to think on it, Tetsurou threads his fingers through Kenma’s hairline, guiding the water to the ends. It cascades into the tub, and Kenma rolls his head obediently when Tetsurou gently tilts it with his thumbs.

Every now and then, a soft hum will gather in Kenma’s throat when Tetsurou touches him, nearly lost to the rushing of the water. He eases his cheek into Tetsurou’s hand as if unaware of it, lashes still bowed, breathing. In and out.

Tetsurou’s stomach coils, rooting him to the floor.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Tetsurou returns again to their Tokyo suburb in the spring. The jasmine bush in Kenma’s front yard is blooming, and the bathroom floor is different. Kenma’s mom had been saving up to have it redone, foregoing the checkered porcelain in favor of a darker, more sophisticated granite.

Kenma’s hair glows against it, Tetsurou thinks. It has always had a certain subtle luster, but now it seems somehow more alive, more resilient.

Kenma will be graduating soon. Tetsurou had watched Nekoma go to Nationals again, watched them do battle with Karasuno again, watched them win—this, for the first time. When he and Yaku and Kai had met the team in the lobby afterwards to congratulate them like the dependable bygone senpai they were, he had pulled Kenma close to him, laid his hand against the back of his head, and felt Kenma’s smile pressed to the fabric of his shirt, felt one set of fingers close around the front of his hoodie.

“Fun?” Tetsurou had asked, unconsciously grazing his knuckles over the straw-yellow curtain at Kenma’s cheek and brushing it aside. The presence of Kenma’s roots had been slimmer that time, as though his body had resisted the growth. They’d have been easy to bleach.

Kenma had nodded, turning his head to Tetsurou’s touch, still smiling obliquely in that way that he always did—as though he knew something Tetsurou did not.

And he had whispered, “Yeah.”

“I got into Waseda,” Kenma says now. He’s trimmed his hair since Tetsurou last saw him; it's closer to the length it was at the beginning of high school, scooped around his chin.

Tetsurou hasn’t even finished taking off his shoes yet. He blinks up at Kenma, still bent over one foot in the entryway.

“Oh,” he says. “But that’s—”

“Your school,” Kenma fills in for him. He’s frowning at Tetsurou’s single discarded sneaker as though it has done something to frustrate him. “I know. I got in. I’m going.”

Tetsurou blinks at him some more. He takes off his other shoe, sets it carefully beside the first, toes pointing toward the door. He straightens up.

“You sound like you’ve made up your mind,” he says eventually, gulping over the pressure in his throat.

Kenma nods once. “Yeah.”

“Kenma—”

“I got into other schools,” Kenma says. “I got scouted for some, too. I thought about it, and then I decided on Waseda. I didn’t do it just for you, Kuro, so don’t—you know. I did it because that’s where I want to go. I did it because that’s where you are. It…” He inhales, slowly, through his nose, and the sound fills the quiet house, fills Tetsurou’s whole chest. “Just because it isn’t what you think I want... doesn’t mean it isn’t what I want.”

Tetsurou feels a tension in his shoulders lessen, a presence dissolved. His fingers slacken at his sides, and he belatedly realizes that he’d had them clenched into fists.

“Kenma,” he repeats.

Kenma looks him in the eye in lieu of an answer. Tetsurou draws in an unsteady breath and steps closer to him, until Kenma’s back is an inch or so from the wall and his chest is perhaps that distance from Tetsurou’s own.

Tetsurou trawls for a word, the right word. Kenma is watching him expectantly, hopefully, warily. His mouth is agog, as though he had planned to speak and realized he’d forgotten how. Tetsurou thinks of his head bowed to the water, thinks of the soft bumps of his spine, thinks of the sweat in his collarbone, thinks of black hair burning into gold, the slivers of sunlight creeping up the gymnasium walls, the unraveling net in the park on the riverbank, the fence between their windows, the promise of a summer that would not end. The walk home.

“Congratulations,” he says, more proudly than he has perhaps ever said anything.

Something in Kenma seems to lessen like a receding tide. His roots are longer now than Tetsurou has ever seen. Tetsurou can’t help feeling as though he has missed something.

“How much do I owe you for the bleach?” he asks dully, sidling past Tetsurou and into the hallway, toward the bathroom.

Tetsurou follows him, picking up the convenience store bag from the floor as he does, and affects an air of nonchalance. “Don’t worry about it. I’m feeling generous.”

“You’re always generous, Kuro,” Kenma murmurs, and before Tetsurou can respond he has settled onto the granite floor in a shaft of the morning sunlight, waiting.

 

 

* * *

 

 

In his narrow Shinjuku apartment, Tetsurou’s dreams wake him up before dawn. There is nothing subtle about the gnawing pain in his stomach like a learned starvation, nor about his fingers gripping the edge of his pillowcase as if he’d mistaken it for hair at the nape of a neck—but still the name of it eludes him. _Longing_ is too pathetic, _loneliness_ too reductive. _Misery_ pretty close, but dramatic.

 _Fragmentation_ , maybe. A feeling of splintering apart, whittled into a new shape, learning to compensate for what is missing.

Four to eight weeks. This time, Tetsurou goes over after six.

“Did you get taller?” he asks Kenma teasingly. “We do need another good middle blocker. You could be Waseda’s Lev.”

Kenma’s horrendous grimace is a work of art. “Please never say anything like that to me again.”

Tetsurou howls a laugh, throwing his head back.

“Hyena,” Kenma deadpans, the same as always.

“You know you’ve missed me,” Tetsurou needles him, bustling over with the bleach, the brush, the bowl. Kenma’s hair is held back this time with a thin elastic headband, bright red. A gift from Yamamoto, no doubt. “Don’t _you_ look cool.”

“You say that every time.”

 _That’s because it’s true every time_. “Cool and tough, like a Shinjuku punk. You’ll fit right in.” Then, in his best coddling voice, “Promise not to cry when it stings your scalp this time?”

“I didn’t cry,” Kenma retorts halfheartedly. Tetsurou remembers that time—how he had ended up holding Kenma’s hand, thumb pressed to his first knuckle, attempting to distract him by proving how much he knew about Final Fantasy, which had, for some reason, only ended up agitating him further. “You think so?”

There he goes again, reacting to things out of order.

Tetsurou nods, pulling on his gloves. “Absolutely.”

“Hm.” Kenma sounds like he does not believe him. “Do you think I could—live with you?”

Tetsurou’s next breath gets caught in his throat, resulting in a loud, hoarse cough. He beats a fist against his chest to free it.

“Maybe,” Kenma adds—a step back.

“Ah, sure,” Tetsurou replies brilliantly, before remembering that his apartment is the approximate size and shape of a locker. “I was thinking of changing apartments anyway, so.”

“Okay,” Kenma says.

At last, Tetsurou lets his eyes wander down to him. The roots are hardly even there, hardly even worth wasting the products to retouch. Still, Tetsurou does.

Kenma’s mom has put in a new showerhead, a detachable one. Tetsurou moves it along the crown of Kenma’s head in a narrow, deliberate circle, watching the white clumps give way to sunlight. Kenma’s eyes fall closed; he tips his head.

“Kuro,” he murmurs, and Tetsurou’s stomach plummets to his knees.

“Yes, yes, I’m almost done,” Tetsurou retorts. “Just a bit longer.”

His fingertips work the conditioner in unerring lines through Kenma’s hair, untangling the strands. Kenma remains still, hands holding the ends of the towel around his neck. Tetsurou turns off the shower and picks up the neatly folded towel he’d pulled from the closet, draping it over Kenma’s head and drying it.

The roots are brighter than the rest of the untoned blonde, making it look as though a glow is emanating from Kenma’s head. A holy power that will change the world, rebuild it anew, like at the end of one of his games—a magic born of nothing more than a good heart and a quiet courage.

“It looks cool,” Tetsurou says softly. He strokes a line along the edge of Kenma’s hairline with his thumb before he can stop himself.

In the half-light of the bathroom, Kenma opens his eyes and looks at Tetsurou upside-down. A clump of wet hair that Tetsurou had missed clings to his cheek, a rivulet of water trailing thinly from it. Tetsurou’s hands go still in the towel, cradling Kenma’s temples through the cloth, heavy with a yearning he still, still cannot name.

“What?” he asks.

The right corner of Kenma’s lower lip slips behind his teeth. Tetsurou recognizes this expression—haunted, indecisive, conflicted. He recognizes the fold between his eyebrows, the red tint to his cheeks, the presence of something unspoken.

“What?” he asks again, quieter this time.

“I…” Kenma says, and does not look away. “I want to be wherever you are.”

He turns redder as he says it, but the rest of his expression doesn’t change. Tetsurou remembers the way he had looked during the last game they had played together. Celestial. Unassailable. Sweat darkening the honey gold to brown. Spent beyond measure, but smiling. Smiling.

He says, “Talk like that and you’ll start making people fall for you, Kenma.”

The flush spreads to Kenma’s ears, deepening, when he lifts a hand to set it hesitantly over Tetsurou’s and says, “Yeah.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“You’ve got natural instincts!” Tetsurou brays, because he has heard pro players say it before and it always sounds sophisticated.

“‘Natural… instincts…’” Kenma repeats, panting on the ground, speaking as though those two words have offended him personally.

Tetsurou snickers, ducking under the dilapidated net to offer him a hand. The sun is going down over the apartment buildings across the river. Tetsurou has been eleven for six days. He likes it a lot, so far.

“You’re gonna be the best volleyball player in all of Japan,” he says confidently. “After me, of course.”

Kenma lifts his head. His dark hair is splayed across his forehead, concealing his thin, ever-doubtful eyebrows.

“You think so?” he mumbles.

Tetsurou falters, lowering his hand. The sunset is orange, casting brassy light over Kenma’s cheek and hair, rendering him ethereal. A hero, as Tetsurou has always understood them to be: bright and constant and brave.

Kenma swings up one small arm, clasping Tetsurou’s hand and pulling himself up. Tetsurou digs his heels into the earth to keep from stumbling.

“I know so,” he says, and Kenma keeps holding his hand.


End file.
